Morning Prayer Tuesday, 16 February 2021

Badly
By Lynn Ungar 

Anything worth doing
is worth doing badly.
No one ever did something well
without doing it poorly first.
But if we’re going to get real,
the chances of your ever getting
really good are slim at best.
The Olympics and the pro leagues
fled with the end of your puberty.
Maybe the Nobel or Pulitzer
is out there waiting, but
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Even on our best days
most of us are merely competent,
and much of the time
adequate is a stretch.
Appearances aside, this might be
one of the happiest things I know.
I hereby absolve you
of the need to be better
than anyone else. Poof.
It is possible to suck at things
with great love. Grab your uke
and I’ll get my mandolin.
Meet me on the porch.
We’ll play together, under tempo
and ever so slightly out of tune.

Good morning and welcome to Morning Prayer

The night has passed, and the day lies open before us;
let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept. 

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,
so may the light of your presence, O God,
set our hearts on fire with love for you;
now and for ever.
Amen. 

Breathe in 

Breathe out 

Be still… 

I arise today,
embraced in the arms
of God the Father,
empowered by the strength
of God the Spirit,
immersed in the love
of God the Son.
I arise today
in the company
of the Trinity,
Father, Spirit and Son.
I arise today
Amen  

Presence

Lord, help me to be fully alive to your Holy presence.
Enfold me in your love.
Let my heart become one with yours.

Freedom

I ask for the grace to believe
in what I could be and do
if I only allowed God, my loving Creator,
to continue to create me, guide me and shape me.

Consciousness

How am I really feeling? Lighthearted? Heavy-hearted?
I may be very much at peace, happy to be here.
Equally, I may be frustrated, worried or angry.
I acknowledge how I really am. It is the real me that the Lord loves.

THE WORD OF GOD  

Mark 8:1-10 

In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them,

“I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way – and some of them have come from a great distance.”  His disciples replied, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.”

Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people.

WORDS OF WISDOM 

Doubt, it turns out, is the passageway from each stage to the next. Without doubt, there can be growth within a stage, but growth from one stage to another usually requires us to doubt the assumptions that give shape to our current stage. . . .

At the Center for Action and Contemplation, one of our core teachings is “the path of descent,” the idea that the spiritual life will eventually require us to descend into a dark tunnel, to descend into unknowing and doubt, to descend into a loss of certainty, to descend through a process that feels like dying. As with Jesus in the Gospels, we find ourselves crying, “Let this cup of suffering be taken from me” [Matthew 26:39] and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46]

This deep anguish characterizes what Brian calls Stage Three: Perplexity. Brian continues:

When I studied the mystics . . .  I learned that they spoke often of purgation (or katharsis) as the portal to illumination (or fotosis) and union (or theosis). They saw purgation as the painful and necessary process by which we are stripped of know-it-all arrogance, ego, and self-will. Perplexity, I realized, was working like an X-ray of my soul, exposing much of my so-called spirituality as a vanity project of my ego, an expression of my arrogant desire to always be right, my desperate and fearful need to always be in control, my unexamined drive to tame the wildness of life by naming it and dominating it with words. The doubt of Perplexity, the mystics helped me see, was just the fire I needed to purge me of previously unacknowledged arrogance. In this way, self-knowledge was another gift that came, unwanted, during my Stage Three descent.

[Through the Christian mystics,] I was exposed to “the dark night of the soul,” a period of desolation in which God feels absent, a period in which one can’t see or understand what is going on, a deep valley during which one feels abandoned and lost. To my surprise, the mystics believed this was not something to be avoided, but rather it was a passageway into something deeper and greater. In fact, only the path of descent into spiritual dryness and soul-darkness could lead the soul to a deeper experience of union with God (or theosis).

Brian McLaren

https://cac.org/doubt-a-necessary-tool-for-growth-2021-02-01/
Copyright © 2018 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide.

PRAYERS & INTERCESSIONS 

We pray for the world… 

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer. 

We pray for the universal church of Christ… 

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer. 

We pray for one another and all those known to us… 

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer. 

The Lord’s Prayer 

As our Saviour taught us, so we pray

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen. 

May God the Father
prepare your journey,
Jesus the Son
guide your footsteps,
The Spirit of Life
strengthen your body,
The Three in One
watch over you,
on every road
that you may follow.
Amen  

THE BLESSING 

May your day be blessed
by moments of quietness,
light in your darkness,
strength in your weakness,
grace in your meekness,
joy in your gladness,
peace in your stillness.
May your day be blessed
AMEN  

Thank you for join us…have a wonderful day!

Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga